The hate cure

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com |BOSTON  There was a story told by arch-Nazi villain Reinhard Heydrich  the evil genius who designed the bureaucracy and methods for the Holocaust  that once there was a son whose mother was kind and loving, but whose father was brutal and tormenting. When the mother died, the son could find no tears at her graveside. But when the hated father died, the son collapsed in paroxysms of grief and committed suicide. It was an ironic cautionary tale by Heydrich suggesting that perhaps after the Nazis destroy the Jews  the object of their all-consuming hatred  they will have nothing left to live for (after telling the tale, he rejected its moral and went on to start the terrible genocide machine.)

That old story from a dark past came to mind here in Boston, as the Democratic Party activists assembled to consummate four years of carefully nurtured Bush hatred with the crowning of a previously inconsequential senator as the Democratic candidate for president. All during the primary campaign, media exit polls identified electablity as the primary reason Democratic voters supported Sen. Kerry. And here in Boston, that reality continues to reflect itself in the mood and chatter of the assembled Democratic foot soldiers. They hate Bush and will do anything to destroy his presidency  even pretend, briefly, that they don't hate him. But there are different kinds of hate. There is the wild, out-of-control hate that sometimes leads to sudden barroom or bedroom homicides. And then there's the coldblooded, premeditated strain, more typical of tribal or other forms of group hate. Such is the Democratic Party's self-induced hatred of George Bush. And, curiously, this great hatred has induced in the usually rambunctious and cantankerous Democratic Party a perverted joy, rapture and inner tranquility.

I have been going to Democratic Party conventions, episodically, since their 1960 convention in Los Angeles in which they chose their young prince, John Kennedy. (I was a politically precocious boy at the time, let the record reflect.) While that was not one of their nastier conventions, nonetheless, Lyndon Johnson was contending for the nomination by passing around rumors of Kennedy's degenerative disease. In 1968, of course, blood spilled outside their convention while invectives flew furiously inside. In 1980, we saw Ted Kennedy coyly keeping out of Jimmy Carter's eager embrace on the stage of the convention's Thursday night finale. And throughout the history of the Democratic Party, passionate battles over platform planks have never, until here in Boston, failed to give evidence to the intellectual ferment of the world's oldest political party.

What is one to make of a political party in which, according to the Boston Globe, over 90 percent of the delegates oppose the Iraq war  the defining issue of this election  while the candidate and the platform support it. And there isn't even a murmur of complaint? The easy answer is that it's just about power. The Democrats will do anything to get back into power, so it is said. But that is not it. Of course, both the Democratic and Republican Parties can't stand being out of power and yearn to regain the power, the patronage and the sheer pleasure of being in office. But until now, neither party has been willing to go against its most heartfelt convictions to gain power.

No, I think the clever boys and girls in the backroom of the Democratic Party have created a monster in this carefully manufactured Bush hatred. Let's remember where this hatred started-in Florida. From Al Gore, through the DNC and into the mouths of rank-and-file Democratic congressmen and senators, the word went out that the Democratic Party would not respect the election results. They methodically asserted that Bush was illegitimately in office because Gore actually got more votes in Florida. Even after the major liberal media outlets did their own recount and found Bush won Florida fair and square, the knowingly false charge was slammed into the brains of Democratic Party true believers. Bush was "selected, not elected" became the slogan.

They carefully nurtured this resentment into a small hatred. Then they compounded it by ridiculing the president's intelligence  even though Bush got better grades at Yale than Al Gore, while still enjoying a vigorous frat life. They repeated endlessly their contempt for Bush's Christian faith  which apparently induces contempt and hatred amongst the Democratic Party faithful. And all of this was before Iraq. This carefully cultivated little hatred was elevated to industrial strength with the accusations that Bush lied his way into war. While disproven by bipartisan findings, the charges persist. Al Gore accused Bush of "betraying" the country. Kerry used the word lie just enough to keep his lunatic pack happy.

The result is a hatred of Bush by the party activists that has consumed their policy passions and convictions. They hate Bush more than they hate the Iraq War. Their great intellectual battle of the 2000s  whether they should stay in the Clinton center or go back to their liberal convictions  has been temporarily subsumed by their common hate of Bush. Should the American voters succumb to poor judgment and elect Kerry, a united Democratic Party may face the plight of the son in the Nazi story of hate and meaning. Bush hate is the glue that holds the party together. If he leaves the scene  the party may quickly fall apart.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington
and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

07/21/04: Berger on the grill 07/14/04: Can Kerry fix Europe? 07/07/04: IT'S EDWARDS! 06/23/04: The Clinton legacy  OOPS! 06/16/04: We desperately need one man, one mind in charge06/09/04: It's called victory06/02/04: Bush wings it  and does well 05/25/04: Beyond the speech: A lesson from Lincoln 05/19/04: America: The strong horse05/12/04: Why Rummy must not resign 05/05/04: Speak up, Mr. Kerry 04/28/04: Kerry's fatal flaw 04/21/04: Beware of an old man in a hurry 04/14/04: Islam confronting its demons?04/08/04: Vigilance is not enough03/24/04: Kerry personally vulnerable03/24/04: Futile finger pointing03/17/04: The Spanish disease 03/10/04: Euro back-stabbers for Kerry02/25/04: What makes John Kerry tick? 02/18/04: Kerry's pre-emptive war policy02/11/04: George W. Bush  grand strategist?02/04/04: Elections in the age of terror 01/28/04: There's a war on?01/21/04: It's good that we live in ignorance of the future01/14/04: The strange case of immigration politics01/07/04: Funding for American presidential elections is beginning to go global12/31/03: Make us laugh 12/24/03: War prophesies12/17/03: Analyze this!12/10/03: Until peace is ready to be negotiated …12/03/03: AFL-CIO meets Monty Python11/26/03: Republicans need to learn from the Romans11/19/03: All of a sudden we have a responsible media?11/12/03: To arms11/05/03: Mayor Mike's appetite for self-destructive accusations10/29/03: A bloody march to peace10/22/03: Calls for a general 's head because his comments may have ruffled the feathers of our esteemed enemies!? 10/08/03: The leakers' agony10/01/03: Managing a scandal 09/24/03: Will we have to balance our strong ethical and religious revulsion of cloning against the danger of being surpassed by a gene-manipulated super-race?09/17/03: The skinny on the First Ladies09/10/03: More than cynicism will be needed to defeat prez09/03/03: Dead Man Politickin'08/27/03: Patience is not America's long suit08/13/03: George Will's trifecta of punitive aspirations07/30/03: A question for the candidates: Whose side are you on?07/23/03: When GOPers attack their leader07/17/03: Spanish fest mirrors U.S. elections07/09/03: On the horns of a dilemma06/25/03: The continuing deaths of American and British soldiers in Iraq
should not be rhetorically minimized -- but sanctified06/18/03: No reason to feel defensive about criticism of the war on terrorism06/11/03: The Clintons  self-proclaimed geniuses  have no defense against the charge of cunning mendacity06/04/03: George 'Machiavelli' Bush? Nah05/28/03: When 'progressives' become reactionaries05/21/03: Yes, this conservative is defending the NYTimes05/14/03: Playing the politics of deflation05/07/03: Only the stupid could think it'll be the economy: Comparing the Bushes
04/30/03: How to squelch increasing Iraqi distrust of America04/25/03: Winning the war, losing the peace04/16/03: Our own domestic Senate Republican Guard better be prepared for a grinding04/03/03: At this human moment we need to act like humans, not just calculating analysts04/02/03: If we could only draft Jennings' eyebrow to the cause, we wouldn't need the 4th Armored Division?03/26/03: This war is showing the world who we really are03/19/03: Time for America to laugh at itself03/13/03: They're coming out of the woodwork: Russert, Buchanan and Moran03/05/03: Franc-tireur 02/26/03: World history is shifting under our feet --- even our most
experienced statesmen are, effectively, inexperienced02/19/03: The shame! We've mischaracterized the French
02/12/03: Schroeder and Chirac will be disproportionately undercutting their interests02/05/03: We need to rise above our temporary anger and seek to preserve our bonds with our European cousins01/29/03: Who is President Bush's stupidest opponent: Saddam Hussein or Tom Daschle?01/22/03: We call them our European cousins --- but I demand a DNA test01/16/03: Dems bare partisan teeth01/02/03: Before the cheering must come the struggle12/27/02: Long ago and far away12/18/02: Be glad that Gore's gone? 12/11/02: What fun! A titanic, once-in-a-century partisan battle royal is in the offing12/04/02: Kerry atwitter11/27/02: The unThankful list11/20/02: First the scare, then the yawn11/13/02: It's going to be a long two years for Lefty Pelosi and the Frisco Dems11/06/02: Technology: A pollster's worst enemy --- thank goodness!10/31/02: Watch this election's Wheel of Fate10/23/02: The Ari and Colin Show: Politics has never been, well, more vaudeville-like10/09/02: Bush beats drums of realism10/02/02: Needed: A political chromatograph to detect any true statements in the public domain09/25/02: Buchanan's new mag09/18/02: There are many forms of peace09/11/02: The imperial period of our history starts09/04/02: Memo to Powell: In periods of upheaval, the refusal to act gives aid to those bent on destruction 08/30/02: Logging old growth is a sham issue